


Have Faith, Chloe

by Olcanarmo



Series: Statue [2]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25210330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olcanarmo/pseuds/Olcanarmo
Summary: Post Season 4, there is trouble in Hell. Deckerstar ensues.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Lucifer Morningstar, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Series: Statue [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826425
Comments: 16
Kudos: 63





	Have Faith, Chloe

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to Needs Must (the one with the statue), so please read that first or this won't make sense.

Chloe considered the dead man and, because she was a professional, refrained from rolling her eyes.

“Did he blow himself up?” she asked.

“Woah, Decker, give me a chance!” Ella protested. “We just got here.” 

They’d been working with Dan to wrap up another job when the call came that a body had been discovered ten minutes away. LA traffic had been kind for once, and the three of them had been almost the first inside what should have been an empty industrial building. Chloe could still hear car doors slamming and the chatter of radios as more uniformed officers arrived outside the warehouse doors. The plastic rustle of police tape being unspooled meant the unis were getting on with securing the scene out front, which was good. The site of an explosion was no place for spectators.

Ella crouched down on the blackened concrete floor and gave the corpse an unsympathetic appraisal. The dead man’s shaven head would have been unhealthily pale even when he was alive. His neck was decorated with tattoos of no artistic merit, ugly symbols that scrawled out from the collar of camouflage gear that had never seen military service. Youth—and a future with the possibility of change—had been all that he’d had going for him, and it was too late for that now. Quite a lot of him was missing.

“But I mean, yeah. It looks like he blew himself up,” Ella admitted. “This is _not_ how you want to run a lab. Man! Sooo many health and safety violations.”

“Not counting the bomb-making equipment?” asked Dan, squatting next to her.

“Oh, definitely counting the bomb-making equipment,” Ella replied. “A. Ma. Teur. But also this place is filthy, there’s water coming in from somewhere, the storage is a mess, the power supply is a nightmare, there’s a—phew!—stink of ammonia and no ventilation—”

“Okay, okay!” Chloe interrupted the litany. Ella had a point though. The place looked more like a garage in need of a clear out than a lab for handling explosives. “Dan, make sure the Bomb Squad are on their way and we’ll—” She broke off and pivoted towards the rear entrance of the room.

“No one’s going to walk in the back with all those unis out front!” Dan objected. But he’d heard the same thing she had, and he kept his voice to a disbelieving whisper.

The three of them fell completely silent as the heavy footsteps approached. Chloe drew her gun. Ella made wide-eyed _no they didn’t secure that door yet_ faces at Dan. 

The extremely surprised man who came into view could have been the twin of their dead guy, from his shaven head to his army fatigues. His mouth hung open as his gaze darted between them and the remains of the bomb-maker, and Chloe had gotten no further than the “L” of “LAPD!” when he turned and bolted.

He wasn’t going to get away. She was after him before Ella and Dan could get to their feet, swerving past cluttered metal shelves to follow him through dim corridors and out into an echoing, empty room that might have been a connecting warehouse. The man stuck close to the wall, trying to make himself less of a target. Chloe certainly wasn’t going to take a shot at him while running, especially with so little light, but she kept her gun in her hand. Her boots slipped in puddles and crunched over broken glass.

She could hear Ella and Dan pounding after her, trying to make up for her head start. _Damn it, Lucifer,_ she thought. _I could really use you and your long legs about now._

The unfairness of it was a familiar hurt. Lucifer wouldn’t even have needed to run, would have just happened to be in place to stroll out in front of the man, say “Hello, Bomb-maker!” and make some stupid joke about banging. He shouldn’t have left her here chasing criminals without him and his stupid jokes.

Before she could get too angry at fate, the fleeing man lost his footing in one of the larger puddles, staggered a few jerky steps, and fell. Ella yelled, “Decker, no! Dan, stop her!” But this was Chloe’s chance to catch him while he was down; she couldn’t spare the time to turn around.

She splashed through the pool the man had slipped in, and gasped to find it cold enough to shock her from the soles of her feet to her ponytail. The jolt from the icy water knocked her off balance, shivered through her inner ear, and caused the world to tremble and invert itself. Disoriented, she had to stop and close her eyes for a second, fighting against vertigo and the sickening impression that the floor and ceiling had swapped places. By the time she was confident that her feet were underneath her, the bomber had lurched upright and back into a run. Chloe grimaced at her lost chance, and went after him as he took a turn into a dark corridor that left him barely visible. She slowed to a jog, determined not to trip again, and tried listening. No matter how she turned her head to catch the sound of them, she couldn’t hear Ella and Dan anymore, just the thud of the man’s footsteps ahead of her. And something else. From behind her and to her left, distant, and unexpected, and brightly beautiful, came trumpet music. 

_LA,_ she thought, _if any city’s weird enough to have musicians rehearsing next to a crime scene, it’s this one._

Chloe dropped her speed again to a walk, made an effort to ignore the distracting music. and squinted ahead. It didn’t help. The darkness had become complete, and the air was growing stuffy. It only added to her unease when the trumpets gave a final flourish and cut out, leaving her alone with the too-loud sound of her own breathing. She couldn’t hear the man she was following. She couldn’t see a thing.

_Not good, Chloe,_ she thought.

She edged her hand that wasn’t holding a gun into her jeans pocket, searching for her cellphone. As her fingers brushed its cool plastic case, her straining eyes caught a blur of white ahead. She let go of the phone, raised her gun, and inched forward, placing her feet with care.

A grey light began to dilute the inky darkness of the corridor, growing a little brighter with every step, and tension relaxed its clawed grip on her shoulder muscles. There was a way out.

The patch of white in front of her moved, swimming into view through the murk, and she realised it was someone’s shirt framed by a dark jacket. Which was a much classier outfit than the camouflage worn by the man she’d been chasing, so perhaps he’d run to a friend. The figure turned away before the half-light could reach and reveal his face, but the movement itself was familiar and struck right to her heart. Even from the back, she knew how he held his head; recognised the reassuring height of him and the poised, dancer’s stance. Joy blazed through her nerve endings a second before doubt damped it down and halted her suddenly eager steps. Lucifer was the person she most wanted at her side, yet the last person who could possibly be here.

Wherever here was. She’d certainly left the warehouse behind. At some point when the lights were out, the corridor’s shabbily painted walls had morphed into black stone, and melded with the ceiling to become a tunnel that opened into…

Chloe didn’t know _what_ it had opened into, apart from a vast and dark space, as if someone had carved the Colosseum out of basalt. An impression that was strengthened by the openings scattered across the looming walls, and the half-seen figures in their shadows. The floor was occupied by the scariest people—if people was the right word, she was beginning to be afraid that demons was more accurate—that she’d ever seen. Hoping for something familiar, she dared to look up, only to see that there was no ceiling out beyond her little bit of tunnel, just charcoal-coloured clouds. The air tasted bitter, of smoke and ash.

She was going to throw up. 

Chloe clamped her teeth together and forced her eyes down, focussing on the back of Lucifer’s jacket. Her suspect had collapsed screaming to the ground in front of her partner, and was being poked at with the toe of a red-soled shoe. When that got no reaction apart from further howls, Lucifer turned to consult with the closest of his attendant demons. At first glance Chloe thought the woman was wearing some sort of white mask, but then she realised the demon’s brown skin bordered bone.

She was _definitely_ going to throw up.

Dread curled her toes in her boots, and her feet refused to take the last steps out of the tunnel.

Lucifer still hadn’t noticed her.

“Yes, I can see—and, Dad knows, hear—that you caught him, Kade. But unfortunately he’s not dead yet,” he was saying. 

The demon woman looked at their captive with a degree of scorn that was impressive from someone with half a face. “Are you sure?” she asked. “He screams like he’s dead.”

_“Hello,_ King of Hell here. Yes, I’m sure. I can tell,” Lucifer said. “Just take him away and calm him down so we can hear ourselves think!” he added, raising his voice over the man’s howls, but Kade laughed.

“Where’s the fun in that?” she asked. “I like it when they’re scared.”

“I don’t care what you like,” Lucifer said. “Be a good demon and take him away until he’s properly dead, or wave him off when he departs back to the land of the living. But take. Him. Away.”

The last three words were emphasised with further nudges from Lucifer’s expensively shod foot, before he drew back and gave Kade access to Chloe’s suspect. The demon bent, threw the man over one shoulder, and stalked off with him. His head bounced as she walked, his screams rising and falling with the motion until they were out of earshot.

Lucifer turned and saw Chloe.

She’d been trying very hard to deny that she was in Hell. Watching Lucifer’s eyes fill with horror, she felt her own emotions mirror his as reality hit them both hard. He took one small step back, a hopeless attempt to retreat from the situation, and then froze.

It was his fear that set her reluctant feet in motion again. It drew her the last few steps out of the tunnel, hoping to reassure him even when she couldn’t calm her own nerves. Failing that, as her old sergeant had said in training: “Sooner or later you will be in a situation that scares you. You’re a team. Be scared together.” 

The demons in the shadows behind Lucifer turned their heads to watch as she came forward. They whispered amongst themselves in a guttural language, and whatever they were saying wasn’t nice. Chloe had kept her composure in front of some of the scariest people the gangs of LA could produce. She had stared down vicious murderers, sometimes without backup, and her ability to face danger with a calm face was hard won. It wasn’t enough in front of this crowd. She couldn’t dismiss the tightness in her stomach or the betraying tremor in her knees, and the demons snickered at her dread.

_Screw them,_ she thought, and steeled herself, waiting to find out how her partner wanted to play this.

Somehow, and with her eyes locked on his she felt the effort of it, he managed a grin.

“Hello, Detective,” he said. “Would you mind putting the gun away, or did you come all this way to shoot me again? It won’t work here, I’m afraid.”

Chloe had almost forgotten that she was holding her gun. She couldn’t help flicking a questioning look at the demons.

“It won’t hurt them, either,” Lucifer provided. _“And they won’t hurt you.”_ He finally broke eye contact with her to send a sweeping red glare across his subjects and make it an order. “Everyone who isn’t the Detective or the Devil, bugger off right now!” he added.

The demons left. Some of them walked through the openings in the sides of the arena, and the more disturbing ones scuttled across the walls, whisking out of sight like giant cockroaches, but they all obeyed. A booming thunder of slamming doors confirmed their departure. Chloe waited for silence before putting her gun away. It might have been useless, but it had been a little bit comforting all the same.

“It won’t work here,” she said. _“Here._ Because this is Hell, right? Am I _dead?_ But I was fine, Lucifer! And I can’t be dead because Trixie will be so scared. She hates it so much when I get hurt. Can you send me back? Please send me back. It’s not that I’m not glad to see you but I can’t stay here.”

Lucifer had been repeatedly murmuring “Detective…” but she couldn’t quit talking. His eyes were brown again, and sympathetic, and she was too scared to stop and hear what he had to say.

Finally, he reached out and caught her hand, and she fell silent, breathing hard. “Detective,” he said, “you’re not dead ye... yee-ess, you’re definitely not dead.”

His terrible attempt to cover up his mistake made her laugh, and it was genuine humour with only a touch of hysteria. “I’m not dead _yet?”_

“Well, no. You’re not. And while you’re alive you can’t abandon all hope! But I can’t send you back; that will happen naturally when your body recovers. _What happened?_ Were you shot?” His fingers tightened on hers, but not before she felt them tremble.

“No!” she protested. “No, I don’t think so. I would have noticed, wouldn’t I?” she tilted her head to make a joke of it.

He shrugged. “Even if you were shot and were somehow too blasé to remember it, you should be making yourself at home in the Silver City by now, not standing in one of Hell’s entrance halls. What do you remember?”

“Um. OK. I was chasing that man you just sent off with—Kade, was it?” she asked, waving in the direction the demon had taken when she carried off her captive.

“Yes,” he said. “One of Mazikeen’s sisters, if you were wondering why she looked familiar.” 

Chloe’s train of thought was completely derailed. “She… that… she was not familiar, Lucifer!” She lowered her voice to a hiss in case there were any demons in earshot who might take offence. _“She has half a face!”_ The penny dropped. “Oh my god, Trixie told me about Halloween but I thought she was talking about a costume. I’m going to throw up.”

“Not on these shoes you’re not! I can’t get another pair down here.” Lucifer gave her hand a little shake to get her attention. “Don’t be faceist, Detective. Focus, please! You were chasing the miscreant…”

“That’s all that happened! I ran after him and we ended up here. Neither of us was not-dead-yet.” Dread filled her stomach with ice. “I mean, there were some bits of bombs, but they weren’t going off, and they were a long way behind us.”

Lucifer closed his eyes in what, in another man, she would have taken for prayer. “Bloody hell,” he said. Then he recovered enough to give her a pained look.

“You didn’t happen to hear any music, did you?” he asked. “No angelic harps? No 90s jams scored for celestial trumpets?”

His tone was sarcastic, but he was standing too close to her to entirely hide his fear. She felt bad for him because seeing her in Hell was probably his worst nightmare. She didn’t feel too happy on her own account either. 

“There was some music,” she confessed. “But it was back the other way and I was chasing the suspect…”

“De _-tect-_ ive,” he groaned. “You overdid the chasing. No one admires your zeal more than I, but that would have been a _very_ good time to let the suspect get away.”

“If it was a bomb, then Dan and Ella were closer to it,” she whispered. “But maybe they went towards the music?”

He looked at her helplessly. And then he tugged on the hand he was holding until she moved forward, and made space for her in his arms. Chloe went to him, terrified. How bad was their situation if _Lucifer_ was initiating a hug? That wasn’t something that he did. Even now his hands were cautious on her back, and she tightened her own arms, trying to communicate that hugging was definitely the right call, and held on to him as if he was the last real thing in the world. Being in Hell, Dan and Ella gone, never seeing Trixie or her mother again, her own body left behind to bleed… her mind balked and refused to consider it. Lucifer was all she was capable of believing in right now. He was also all that was stopping her dropping to the ground and screaming like her suspect had.

“Just give me a minute,” she managed to say.

“Of course,” he replied, and hugged her unstintingly, not moving other than to raise a hand to cradle the back of her head. She had the feeling that if she’d asked for an hour rather than a minute it wouldn’t have made any difference to him.

“The afterlife isn’t all bad,” she muttered, tucking her nose into the warm sliver of air between his shirt and jacket, close enough to feel his chest kick with his brief, somewhat forced, exhalation of laughter. “But last time we did this you were a bit dead. And now _I’m_ a bit dead. We’ve got to get back to the time when our biggest problems were being interrupted by flight attendants and telephones.” She gave him a final squeeze and pushed away so that she could see his face.

His brow lifted in acknowledgment of her attempt to lighten the mood. “But don’t forget, last time I was blond,” he said. “So you can’t deny that there has been significant improvement.”

She looked him up and down, making a show of considering it, and managed a serious nod even though her lips were twitching. “Yes. Yes, good point. But I thought you would have wings all the time now.” Had rather hoped to see his angel wings again, if she was honest with herself.

“That’s more the Silver City’s style. Or lack thereof.” He shrugged and dismissed the topic. “It’s a needless show.”

“And there isn’t fire everywhere?” She looked around at the stone walls, hoping they weren’t about to burst into flame.

“No, not everywhere. You really shouldn’t believe everything you read in Rome,” Lucifer chided. He turned and raised his voice. “Kade, this had better be important!”

A door slammed open on the other side of the arena and Kade entered, shoving a tall man in front of her by means of a hand around his neck. “Harat says he needs to speak with you, Lucifer,” she called as she approached.

As Kade said the name, Chloe recognised Harat. He had been possessing a different body for most of their previous acquaintance, but she’d caught a glimpse of his demon form when Lucifer had dragged him back to Hell. The real Harat looked like a young white man, his tea-coloured eyes a shade lighter than Lucifer’s black coffee. He was taller than any of them apart from her partner—she would estimate him at 6 foot—and had long red hair with a hint of a curl. His slender form was demon-fashionable in leather, but unlike Kade he was dressed with an eye to the bedroom rather than the battlefield, where a blade would have found an easy target in all the chest he had on show. Even with Kade’s grip limiting the movement of his head, he managed to give Chloe a calculating look. She didn’t doubt that he remembered her. She remembered him and the pain he’d caused quite clearly; screaming nuns were hard to forget.

Kade gave him one more push and let go abruptly, but he didn’t so much as stumble. Instead he made a show of cracking his neck and grinned inhumanly wide, revealing a double row of shark teeth.

“I told you to stay out of my sight, Harat,” Lucifer said, anger deepening his voice.

“Well, I _was_ doing that,” Harat explained in a British accent. “And I hate to intrude when you’re entertaining the lovely policewoman, but I thought you might want to know that Cain has escaped. And Kade was kind enough to escort me into your august presence to give the word.

“Don’t stab the messenger!” he added quickly, raising his hands in mock surrender.

The last time Chloe had seen Lucifer and Harat together they’d been throwing knives at each other. The mood hadn’t improved much now they were limiting themselves to sharp words.

“Escaped?” Lucifer was asking pointedly. “And how would that have happened?”

“I couldn’t say,” Harat mused. “But I did notice the door to Reese Getty’s room was standing ajar. It _has_ seen a lot of use lately, hasn’t it? Maybe Cain popped inside for a visit?”

Reese, Chloe knew, was her friend Linda’s ex-husband. Doubly ex since he had died. And Cain, she remembered more reluctantly, was the man she had known as Marcus Pierce. Also dead, and pretty much the last person she wanted to see in Hell or anywhere else. She frowned. If there was a connection between Reese and Pierce, she couldn’t see it. Kade was glaring at the back of Harat’s head, although Chloe didn’t know if that was something personal or part of the demon’s general attitude. Harat was alternating between hostility and smugness. Lucifer… if she’d blinked she would have missed it, but for a second Lucifer had looked guilty. He pulled himself together immediately.

“Message delivered,” he told Harat. “Run along.” The last was decidedly menacing.

Harat bowed and left. Chloe had heard that you could convey a lot of meaning with a bow, but she’d never seen anyone do it with the same spirit as a raised middle finger. The effect was only spoiled by the wide berth he gave Kade as he sauntered away across the vast floor of the arena. Lucifer, face unreadable, watched him go.

Chloe sighed. She wanted to get away from squabbling demons and go home, she wanted to take Lucifer with her, and she really wanted to ask him if he’d thought of any way they could make that happen. She _didn’t_ want to look into Pierce’s disappearance, but she knew her partner was going to have to. Apparently she wasn’t going to get time off just because she was in Hell. She nudged Lucifer. “So.”

He looked down at her. “So?”

“We’ve got a jailbreak, huh?”

He smiled. “Would you like to join me in tracking down our escapee, Detective?”

She nodded. “Mmm-hmm. I would have liked to question Harat—because he’s definitely guilty of something—but I’m outside my jurisdiction so I’ll let you take the lead on this one.”

Kade laughed. “We don’t question people! We have alternatives that are a lot more fun, Detective…?”

Chloe made herself look directly at Kade and ignore the instincts that would have had her yelling for a paramedic back on Earth. As Lucifer had pointed out with his terrible pun, to show any discomfort at Kade’s face would be unforgivably rude. _And,_ her inner cop whispered, _a weakness you can’t afford._ It helped to remember that Trixie hadn’t worried about Maze. Her irrepressible Little Monkey had declared her friend’s face to be awesome. 

Chloe offered her hand to the demon. “Detective Chloe Decker,” she said. “I used to share an apartment with Maze.”

Kade smiled, which made the tendons of her face move in disturbing, and horribly visible, ways. “Mazikeen? You roomed with that goody two-shoes? You have my sympathy, Decker. I hope you weren’t bored.” 

It was impossible to know if she was joking. “No, not bored,” Chloe managed. “Not really. You two aren’t close?”

“Please!” Kade laughed. “The children of Lilith don’t do _close._ We grow up alone. And strong!”

“Okay! Okay, good? Good for you!” Chloe blurted, unable to think of anything more tactful to add to that line of conversation. Mentally chalking up a lack of screaming as a win for good manners, she returned to her original point. “So… we don’t trust Harat, do we?”

“Not as far I could throw him,” Lucifer said. “Considerably less far, because I could toss him quite a long way.”

“That’s good,” Chloe said, refusing to acknowledge Lucifer’s smirk on the word _toss._ “I don’t think he’s forgiven you for bringing him back down here. He seems pretty hostile.”

“It would have been far more suspicious if he’d been friendly,” Lucifer pointed out. “And I imagine he wanted me to believe him.”

Chloe decided that she didn’t envy Lucifer. Hell was an exhausting place to rule.

Her partner merely bent an elbow as if a ball awaited them. “Shall we investigate, Detective?” he asked, and she slipped her hand through his arm.

Kade led the way through one of the doorways opposite, although Chloe didn’t know how anybody could tell one from another. Hell didn’t seem to bother with signposts; maybe they wanted everyone lost. A cramped tunnel where she and Lucifer could barely walk next to each other took them out into a maze of narrow canyons that were open to the sky. Closed doors were set into the rock walls at random intervals, and the walls themselves were festooned with chains. The overall impression was of the corridor from The Shining redecorated by a heavy metal band. Curious, Chloe hung back and rubbed the tip of one finger across the rocky canyon side. It was rough, and crystalline on a giant scale, and if she hadn’t left conventional geology behind she would have called it volcanic. The path beneath her feet was contrastingly smooth—polished by who knew how many eons of footsteps—and tiled with a woozy honeycomb of irregular hexagons. The lack of symmetry hurt her eyes. 

Lucifer looked over his shoulder at her and raised an enquiring eyebrow, and she hurried to catch up, hoping that she’d only looked interested and not as if she’d been judging his home. Even with the sky above her, Hell was oppressive and dispiriting. Lucifer didn’t seem bothered, but she didn’t know how he could stand it.

“Where did this place come from?” Chloe wondered. “Did someone… build it?”

“Not unless you count Dad,” Lucifer said. “It grew out of the void really, but he caused it to grow. And it’s still growing, as more humans die.”

“Does the sun ever shine here?” she asked, trying to gain some understanding of the place.

“The light isn’t from the sun,” he said. “It’s just light. And the clouds are always there. Sometimes there’s a fall of ash, but nothing you’d call weather. There’s no day and night here.”

That made even less sense. “Then how do you know what time it is?”

“Time is subjective,” he said. “You haven’t been down here as long as you think.”

Chloe was relieved, and allowed herself a brief, desperate moment of hope that her body was receiving urgent medical attention and not just bleeding out. Then she deliberately pushed away the thoughts of things she couldn’t help, and listened to Lucifer’s explanation of the rooms they were passing and the hell loops inside.

“So, people torture themselves with whatever they feel guilty about,” she summarised, finding the doors much more disturbing now that she could imagine what lay behind them. “And relive it in there over and over again?”

“That’s right,” said Lucifer. “You can mostly leave them to get on with it. Trust Cain to be difficult.”

“What… what is Marc… Cain… torturing himself with?” Chloe asked. “Is it me?”

Lucifer’s eyes slid towards her and away. “He didn’t have the common decency to feel guilty about the way he treated you,” he replied. “Or any of the others down the millennia. Charlotte Richards’s death, on the other hand, was a tragic accident. I would have thought that was enough to keep him confined, but evidently not. Maybe his atrophied conscience had its limits. Ah-ha! Here we are.”

The door to Cain’s room was a solid slab, hung with chains thicker than Chloe’s arms, but nevertheless standing open. 

Kade stuck her head in. “Empty,” she said. “It still smells of him though. He hasn’t been gone long.”

Chloe peered inside without crossing the threshold. The room was indeed empty; a rough featureless cave, barely illuminated by the faint light that crept past her and dragged her shadow across the floor. “It’s small,” she noted. “I thought you said you could fit a whole world in there?”

“Not a whole one,” Lucifer replied. “And they’re bigger when they’re occupied.”

Chloe frowned at this blatant disregard of physics. “Ella would have something to say about this,” she muttered.

“She’d say ‘dimensionally transcendental’,” Lucifer supplied, and she stared at him blankly. “No time for British TV, Detective? If you try binge watching with Ms Lopez and a bottle of tequila she becomes quite eloquent on the subject of David Tennant. And who amongst us would disagree?”

Chloe certainly couldn’t. She would have had to know what he was talking about to disagree.

“OK, so Cain isn’t here,” she said. “Where would he go?”

“Reese Getty’s room, according to Harat,” Kade supplied. “He said it was open.”

“It wasn’t open!” Lucifer snapped. “I closed it every time!”

There was an awkward silence. Chloe didn’t know why he was feeling guilty but she was beginning to worry.

She bit the bullet. “Lucifer,” she asked. “Why were you visiting Reese?”

He ignored the question, exasperating man, simply saying, “Come on,” and walking off so quickly that she had to stretch her legs to keep up until good manners slowed him back down. He didn’t speak again until they arrived at another door and he swore. It was slightly ajar.

“Is Cain in there?” Chloe asked.

“And if he is, how did he escape _his_ room? Or as you said, Detective, was it a jailbreak? In which case who let him out?” Lucifer demanded.

“Harat!” Kade spat. “That evil little weasel gives Hell a bad name. I’m going to rip his—”

“No ripping!” Chloe interrupted. “I don’t like him either, but I’m guessing he’s not the only local bad guy. We don’t have any evidence.”

Kade shot Lucifer an outraged look that made him wince. “Detective,” he said in mollifying tones, “we can’t do away with ripping; this is Hell. Kade, please keep the ripping in reserve for now. The Detective and I will go in, see if we can find Cain and get to the bottom of this. You go and track down Harat.”

Kade growled. “Fine” she said. “But there had better be _some_ sort of torture coming up.” And she jogged off through the canyon.

Chloe looked at the door in front of them with deep mistrust. “We know this is a trap, right?” she asked her partner.

“We suspect it, certainly,” he answered. “But we won't get to the bottom of this if we stand on the doorstep like pints of milk. Ready?”

Before she could argue further, he opened the door onto the LA suburbs.

The sunlight hit her first. She had to close her eyes against the sudden brightness of it, but even then it soaked through her eyelids. Wind tugged the ends of her ponytail. She felt a hand in hers, and opened watering eyes to stare at Lucifer. He stood maybe a fraction taller than he had under the confining skies of Hell, taking deep breaths of the smoke-free air. Why hadn’t she ever appreciated life on Earth? Homesickness smote her, prompting her to get moving before watering eyes became tears of self-pity.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“It’s an illusion of LA built from Reese’s memories,” Lucifer said. “From our memories too, now that we’re here. Reese will be busy trying to prove that I'm the Devil, Linda will be trying to get him to sign the divorce papers, we’ll be… we’ll be right over there.” He pulled her down behind a parked car.

Chloe peeked over the hood and saw Lucifer strolling along the other side of the street, his head turned as he spoke to the small, blonde woman walking next to him. 

She looked at Lucifer crouched beside her.

She looked back at the Lucifer across the street.

And then she realised that the woman next to the other Lucifer was her. 

“Oooo, look, we’re just getting to a good bit,” Lucifer said next to her. “Investigating away.”

“Oh. That’s weird,” she breathed.

“Why?” Lucifer asked. “Presumably you’ve seen yourself on screen.” He smiled reminiscently. “Wearing considerably fewer articles of clothing.”

Chloe rolled her eyes at him. “That was just a character, not me. That’s me.”

“Not quite. You’re you. She’s a… a bit of infernal virtual reality. Lovely though,” he added.

Their doppelgängers turned the corner, giving Chloe a sneaky look at Lucifer’s ass and him an openly appreciative look at hers. She cleared her throat. “So,” she said, “if Cain is in here somewhere, how do we find him?”

“I’ve never been very good at predicting what that psychopath would do,” Lucifer said. “Or I would have saved us both a great deal of grief.”

Chloe didn’t want to get bogged down in _that._ “Is there something in here he would want?” she continued. “Something he could take out to give himself some sort of advantage?”

“Reese is the only thing in here that’s real, and I don’t know why anyone would want him.” Lucifer replied.

“Well, can you sense Cain in here?” she persisted.

“Really, Detective,” he admonished. “I don’t possess any sort of celestial gaydar.”

It was just like old times, with Lucifer failing to be at all helpful. She tried to stay on track. “OK, so if this is LA we need to check out the places Cain might be. Pierce’s home, Reese’s office if Cain’s singled Reese out, the precinct… Lux maybe? This is going to take a while.”

“Not that long,” her partner replied. “I know where I left the car—where he left the car—look, obviously pronouns are somewhat difficult under these circumstances, but I know where the car is.”

Sure enough, the Corvette was parked less than a block away. Chloe ran her hand over the gleaming hood before she got in, half expecting it to dissolve. If felt solid enough, the metal warmed by the sun.

Lucifer slid into the driver’s seat and produced car keys from his pocket. She wondered if he’d had them all along or if they were part of the loop.

“Come on, Detective!” Lucifer said. “I told you I knew where it was.”

Chloe climbed into her seat. “Because you’ve been here before, right?”

“Yes,” he said, and pulled away fast enough to make her hold on to the side of the car and postpone her questions.

They spent the rest of the day covering the city but finding no trace of Cain. And as the hours went by, Chloe gradually stopped expecting the other LA to disappear. The people and things around her were as real as those back home, from the surge and swirl of the music in Lux, to the fried onion enticement of street food, to the fluorescent lights in the precinct. Only time began to move in a dreamlike way, whisking them from one spot to the next without any need to travel between them. The wheres were real enough, but the hows and whys kept eluding her.

Finally, blinking at her computer screen, stiff from sitting at her desk too long and jittery from too much coffee, she admitted to herself that they weren’t going to locate their suspect today. And she must be tired, because she had blanked on the suspect’s name.

“Lucifer,” she began, intending to ask him, and then felt stupid and amended it to, “I’m going to call it a day, OK? We can start fresh tomorrow. I want to make sure Trixie’s all right.” It was wholly irrational, but the faintest sense of foreboding was crawling up her spine.

“Of course, Detective,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.”

The sun had gone down when she turned the key in the lock and tiptoed in ahead of Lucifer. “Let’s check on Trixie,” she said. “You know, she’s so glad you stayed.”

Lucifer tilted his head, a picture of puzzlement. “I did?” he said. “I must have. The urchin is glad?”

Chloe laughed nervously. “I mean, of course you know—she’s probably told you a thousand times—but… God, I’m a terrible mother, I can’t remember who was meant to be watching her.”

There was no one else in the apartment, and it must have been later than she thought because Trixie was asleep in bed. Chloe lifted the covers to make sure her Monkey had changed into her pyjamas, and then kissed her hair and tucked her in more soundly.

She was very aware of Lucifer standing in the doorway, pretending he didn’t care.

Much as she hated to dwell on it, things had been awkward between them since the night he’d sent the demons back to Hell. Lucifer had tried to say goodbye on the penthouse balcony, and she’d abandoned all dignity and thrown her arms around him until he’d changed his mind. She’d been a bit embarrassed about the lack of dignity part and, as far as she could deduce from the amount of time Lucifer had been spending with baby Charlie, he’d been feeling guilty and worried about demons crawling out of the woodwork.

Still, the demons hadn’t shown, Lucifer had relaxed as much as he ever did, and she was willing to put the embarrassing memories behind her. Besides, she’d meant what she’d said even if she’d cried too much while saying it.

And now she sensed her opportunity.

“We’ll go through so we don’t disturb her,” she whispered to Lucifer, drawing him out of Trixie’s room and into hers. “I wanted to say,” she added, “Trixie’s not the only one who’s glad that you stayed after the Mayan. I’m glad too.”

He looked bewildered again, and she was suddenly afraid that he was going to disagree with her or, worse, leave after all. “I know it was a tough decision for you,” she continued. “I just… I don’t know what I would have done without you and...” She took a deep breath. “And I love you and I’m glad that you stayed.”

Lucifer blinked slowly, still confused but no longer struggling with whatever it was. “Chloe,” he said, taking a deliberate breath of his own, “I’m glad I stayed too.”

She smiled and reached up to touch his face. He pressed his cheek into her hand just a little, allowing himself to keep eye contact. “Why don’t you stay a bit longer?” she asked.

“For dinner?” he asked cautiously, as if she’d maneuvered him into the kitchen and not the bedroom.

She gave him an inviting smile. “Or breakfast,” she said. “Or longer than that.”

It killed her watching him instantly suppress the hope that brightened his face. She wasn’t exactly being subtle, might even have crossed the line into corny, and it still wasn’t enough to make him believe that good things were real.

A stray thought: _If this were real, we would both be more nervous,_ drifted across her mind and sank without trace. She had more important things to concentrate on, mainly that Lucifer was very close and his cheek was warm under her palm.

“Just don’t leave me,” Chloe said, which wasn’t what she had meant to say, but her heart had taken over from her brain.

“Never,” he replied, solemn as a vow.

She didn’t kiss him. He didn’t kiss her. Instead she rose up on the balls of her feet just as he leant down, and they kissed each other, cared for each other, and held each other up. She felt the strain leave his muscles as he stopped holding himself apart from her, felt an eager, humming tension build in its place and draw them together.

He was, she thought, not for the first time, the best kisser she had ever known. He had had thousands of years of practice, but presumably so had Marcus and it hadn’t helped him. Lucifer, she believed, would consider himself a terrible failure if he and his partner weren’t both delighted by the experience. So why was she thinking of Marcus anyway? Better to embrace the Devil, who kissed as honestly as he spoke and revealed his heart to her every time. She applied herself to being the best kisser that Lucifer had ever known, and hoped she was revealing her own heart to him.

When the height difference finally became uncomfortable and her knees unsteady, she dropped back. His hands fell from her hair and slipped under her jacket to rest on her waist, heating her skin through her shirt. She slid her fingers free of his hair in turn, tracing a path from his cheeks, to his jaw, down to his collar. She brushed the warm skin of his neck, and felt his pulse kick beneath her knuckles as she started working on the top buttons of his shirt.

“Ugh, your clothes are so nice,” she said. “It’s a shame to take them off.”

“No, please take them off,” he said faintly, and she laughed up at him.

“MOMMY!” Trixie screamed from the other room, shattering the perfect moment, and maternal instinct had Chloe out of the door before the echo died.

Father Kinley—no, it had to be Dromos—was carrying Trixie through the living room towards the front door. He held her in one arm, and when he paused to cover her mouth with his free hand Trixie bit his fingers hard enough to draw blood, kicking and wriggling all the while. It was enough to give a living man pause, not enough against the demon. “Moooom!” Trixie yelled. “LUCIFER!”

Chloe couldn’t go for her gun, couldn’t risk harming her daughter. She had to get Trixie clear, and then she was going to kill him, demon or not. “Don’t be scared, Trix,” she said, approaching Dromos slowly, hands held wide. “Hey. Hey, Dromos. Stop. Put her down. You don’t need to take her.”

“No, I don’t,” he agreed. 

“Then why are you here?” she asked.

“Oh, Chloe,” he said. “I’m a demon. We don’t need a _reason_ to hurt people.”

Lucifer stepped in front of her, and she saw with relief that he was changing to his devil face as he moved.

“Don’t be scared, Trixie,” Chloe said again. “It’s Lucifer.”

But Trixie knew her friend. “Lucifer!” she cried, squirming an arm free and reaching for him, before Dromos adjusted his grip and got her pinned again. He shook the blood from his bitten hand.

“Dromos,” Lucifer snarled, his voice deep enough for Chloe to feel it in her lungs. “Let the child go.”

“Because my king says so?” Dromos laughed. “That won’t work. You’re not a king! _You_ made yourself a subject. And _she_ made you vulnerable.” He pulled out a gun and shot Lucifer.

Trixie wailed, and Chloe would have echoed her whole-hearted misery if she could. She followed Lucifer down, fumbling to take off her jacket and press it over his wound. 

“Oh, not again. Being shot is really starting to lose its novelty,” Lucifer wheezed, and for a moment she thought it would be okay, but the amount of blood was bad, soaking through the thick cloth. She pressed down while watching Dromos. If he left the room she would have to leave Lucifer to go after her daughter, and she didn’t know how to do that.

Lucifer raised a clawed hand with effort and let it fall on hers. Quietly, and very calmly, he said, “Chloe, you have to let go. Save Trixie.”

“No,” Chloe said, shaking her head to deny what he was saying, deny that there was nothing she could do for him. Lucifer didn’t respond. His eyes closed, and she felt his chest shudder under her hands and then stop moving. His devil face relaxed but didn’t change back. There was a small triangle of red skin showing at his shirt collar where moments ago she’d been undoing his buttons to reveal _human_ skin, and that was the final injustice. Chloe rose in fury, her hands and the knees of her trousers sticky with Lucifer's blood.

Trixie’s cries changed from “Lucifer” to “Mommmeeee.”

Dromos smiled. “Save Trixie? He died an optimist.” He pointed the gun at Chloe.

She made it halfway before it went off, and the last thing she saw before her eyes closed was Dromos carrying Trixie away.

Sunlight soaked through Chloe’s eyelids and a gust of wind lifted the corners of her jacket. A large, familiar hand wrapped around hers. She opened her eyes to find Lucifer standing beside her, his perfect hair unruffled by the breeze that caught at her ponytail.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“It’s an illusion of LA built from Reese’s memories,” Lucifer said. “From our memories too, now that we’re here. Reese will be busy trying to prove that I'm the Devil, Linda will be trying to get him to sign the divorce papers, we’ll be… we’ll be right over there.” He pulled her down behind a parked car.

Chloe peeked over the hood and saw Lucifer strolling along the other side of the street, his head turned as he spoke to a version of her.

“Oooo, look, we’re just getting to a good bit,” Lucifer said next to her. “Investigating away.”

“Oh. That’s weird,” she breathed. Her head was spinning, and looking at another version of herself was not helping. “I thought… Did we… What’s going on?”

“It’s perfectly straightforward,” Lucifer said, and then frowned. “We… we need to find our suspect, and luckily I know where I left the car. Lucifer left the car. You know what I mean.”

Sure enough, the Corvette was parked less than a block away, gleaming in the sun. “Come on, Detective!” Lucifer said, sliding into the driver’s seat and waving the keys at her. “I told you I knew where it was.”

Chloe climbed into her seat. “Because you’ve been here before, right?”

“Yes,” he said, and pulled away fast enough to make her hold on to the side of the car and postpone her questions.

They spent the rest of the day covering the city. Time seemed to move in a dreamlike way, whisking them from one spot to the next without any need to travel between them, and Chloe felt her ability to focus slipping away.

Finally, blinking at her computer screen, stiff from sitting at her desk too long and jittery from too much coffee, she admitted to herself that they weren’t going to locate their suspect today. And she must be tired, because she had blanked on the suspect’s name.

“Lucifer,” she began, intending to ask him, and then felt stupid and amended it to, “I’m going to call it a day, OK? We can start fresh tomorrow. I want to make sure Trixie’s all right.” It was wholly irrational, but the faintest sense of foreboding was crawling up her spine.

“Of course, Detective,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.”

The sun had gone down when she turned the key in the lock and tiptoed in ahead of Lucifer. “Let’s check on Trixie,” she said. “You know, she’s so glad you stayed.”

Lucifer tilted his head, a picture of puzzlement. “I did?” he said. “I must have. The urchin is glad?”

Chloe laughed nervously. “I mean, of course you know—she’s probably told you a thousand times—but… God, I’m a terrible mother, I can’t remember who was meant to be watching her.”

There was no one else in the apartment, and it must have been later than she thought because Trixie was asleep in bed. Chloe lifted the covers to make sure her Monkey had changed into her pyjamas, and then kissed her hair and tucked her in more soundly.

She was very aware of Lucifer standing in the doorway, pretending he didn’t care.

Much as she hated to dwell on it, things had been awkward between them since the night he’d sent the demons back to Hell. Lucifer had tried to say goodbye on the penthouse balcony, and she’d abandoned all dignity and thrown her arms around him until he’d changed his mind. She’d been a bit embarrassed about the lack of dignity part and, as far as she could deduce from the amount of time Lucifer had been spending with baby Charlie, he’d been feeling guilty and worried about demons crawling out of the woodwork.

Still, the demons hadn’t shown, Lucifer had relaxed as much as he ever did, and she was willing to put the embarrassing memories behind her. Besides, she’d meant what she’d said even if she’d cried too much while saying it.

And now she sensed her opportunity.

“We’ll go through so we don’t disturb her,” she whispered to Lucifer, drawing him out of Trixie’s room and into hers. “I wanted to say,” she added, “Trixie’s not the only one who’s glad that you stayed after the Mayan. I’m glad too.”

He looked bewildered again, and she was suddenly afraid that he was going to disagree with her or, worse, leave after all. “I know it was a tough decision for you,” she continued. “I just… I don’t know what I would have done without you and…” She took a deep breath. “And I love you and I’m glad that you stayed.”

Lucifer blinked slowly, still confused but no longer struggling with whatever it was. “Chloe,” he said, taking a deliberate breath of his own, “I’m glad I stayed too.”

She smiled and reached up to touch his face. He pressed his cheek into her hand just a little, allowing himself to keep eye contact. “Why don’t you stay a bit longer?” she asked.

“For dinner?” he asked cautiously, as if she’d maneuvered him into the kitchen and not the bedroom.

She gave him an inviting smile. “Or breakfast,” she said. “Or longer than that.”

It killed her watching him instantly suppress the hope that brightened his face. She wasn’t exactly being subtle, but he never believed that good things were real.

_If this were real,_ she thought, and her smile froze. “Lucifer…” she said slowly, trying to pin down her unease. “Does this feel familiar to you? Like we’ve done this before? Do you know what’s going to happen next?”

“I don’t know, but I’m hopeful,” he said with a grin.

Chloe was hopeful too; she wanted nothing more than to kiss him. But something was still wrong. She stepped away from him and sat down on the bed, needing a moment to figure it out.

Lucifer didn’t follow her. Surprisingly, since she couldn’t begin to explain what was worrying her, he turned in a slow circle, examining the room. Of course there was nothing to see and, when he bent and declared the space under the bed free of monsters, she gave up.

“Okay,” she laughed. _“Okay,_ Lucifer. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill the mood, so why don’t you come here and… Lucifer?”

As far as responses to _that_ particular invitation went, staring fixedly over her shoulder with an expression of horror wasn’t the most flattering reaction she’d ever had.

“What the bloody hell is that monstrosity?” Lucifer demanded.

Chloe twisted to look at the statue on the bedside table. “Oh,” she said. “A nun gave it to me.”

“Is that… is that supposed to be me?” he stuttered. _“Me?_ There’s artistic license and then there’s outright insult. It’s _hideous.”_

“I’m sorry, should I have taken the one of Michael?” Chloe shot back. “Because that was the choice, and you’d gone back to Hell, and I needed something to hold on to, and nuns are very hard to refuse!” She stopped, pummelled by memories.

Lucifer was staring at her. “I’d _gone back to Hell,”_ he said. “Oh, for crying out loud! I didn’t stay! It’s a damned loop!”

“MOMMY!” Trixie screamed from the other room, and Chloe rocketed to her feet, everything forgotten apart from her daughter. Lucifer reached out and stopped her headlong rush for the bedroom door, pulling her into his arms.

“Lucifer!” she cried in horror. “Let me go! It’s Trixie!”

“It’s not,” he said. “It’s not Trixie. It’s not real, remember? You were so smart, Detective. You worked it all out just a moment ago.”

Trixie screamed “LUCIFER!” and he shuddered as his devil face overtook him.

“I admit it feels real,” he said. “Come on, Detective! Think!” He reached up and pressed clawed hands over her ears, muffling Trixie’s cries.

Chloe had never been so close to him in his devil form. For a moment, trapped and unable to go to her daughter, it was the stuff of nightmares. She sobbed, and Lucifer’s mouth twisted in distress.

“Please, Detective,” he said, moving his hands so she could hear him. “If you go out there, I’ll have to go with you, and then we’re going to die I don’t know how many more times.”

Chloe stopped fighting, hands half raised to his chest to push him away. Shaking, she remembered touching his chest before, remembered using her wadded up jacket to try and slow the bleeding. The jacket she was still wearing. She blinked at him.

He took the blink as an encouraging sign. “Don’t move? Just for a minute? Promise?” he asked.

She nodded, too confused to speak. He let her go and backed away slowly, one arm still stretched towards her in case she changed her mind, the other groping behind him as he climbed over the bed.

“There’s something I need you to see,” he said, grabbing a metal figure off the bedside table, and coming back to her in something closer to a scramble than his usual elegant movement. “Here you are.” He pressed the statue into her hands and curled his own fingers around them. “You put this in here. It has to be from your memories because I didn’t know you’d kept it, and _I_ would have come up with something tasteful. You needed something to hold on to, remember? Hold on to it now and remember who you are.”

Chloe’s palms pressed into the little horns of the Satan statue. It was a solid, undeniable weight in her hands, smooth bronze except for the rough spot where the figure of Michael had broken off. “You went back to Hell,” she said, remembering, “and the nuns gave me this. You didn’t stay with me. I’m not-dead-yet. And this is a hell loop and _we need to get out of here, Lucifer!”_

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said, and touched his palm to the bedroom door. “Not this one. It will be the door to the street, I imagine. We’ll have to go past Dromos, but if we remember he’s not real he probably can’t hurt us. And we can probably still kick his arse. Will you be able to keep going, Detective? Past your illusory offspring? I can carry you out if need be.”

“You know, I heard the word ‘probably’ a couple of times there.” Chloe said. “But I’m going to ignore it.” She was not about to be carried. Someone had lured them here. Someone had used Lucifer and Trixie’s pain against her. “I can walk out,” she gritted. “And then I can make someone sorry for this.”

“Well,” Lucifer said. “At least we know what’s waiting for us. Count of one? One!” He yanked the bedroom door open and they dashed out.

Chloe threw the statue at Dromos before he could bring up his gun. She had deliberately aimed wide to avoid Trixie, real or not, but it made the demon pause and flinch. Lucifer came at him from the other side, eyes burning in his devil face, and didn’t stop to talk this time. He grabbed Dromos’s free arm that wasn’t holding Trixie, twisted it behind his back, and wrenched it upwards until the demon was on tiptoes.

“My King!” Dromos gasped. “Your claws!”

“Oh, _now_ I’m a king, am I?” Lucifer snarled. Dromos’s uncomfortable position had caused his leather jacket to gape, and Lucifer reached under it, snatched the gun from its holster, and pistol-whipped the demon with it. Dromos collapsed, eyes rolling back in his head, and let go of Trixie. Lucifer dropped the gun and caught her just in time. He set her on her feet and tried to step away, stopping when she threw her arms around him. 

“Sorry, urchin,” Lucifer said, somewhat hindered by his claws as he peeled himself gingerly out of her grip. “Your mother and I are leaving now.”

He went to the front door and rattled it. “It’s locked,” he said. “I don’t know why they thought that would make any difference.” He gave the door a sudden jerk, and it opened with a clanking of chains, revealing the dark canyon walls of Hell. “Shall we?”

Chloe stepped past the prone form of Dromos and stopped, staring down at her daughter. Although, truly, it wasn’t so far down anymore. Even barefoot in space pyjamas, her little girl was growing so fast.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Trixie said. She shrugged and smiled. “I know you’re busy. I can look after myself.”

“Detective,” Lucifer said, with a touch of impatience that sparked her own anger. What did Lucifer know about the heartache of watching your child grow? Of not being at home and missing so much? He wasn’t a parent, or even paternal. He called Trixie ‘urchin’. He’d called her ‘spawn’, for god’s sake.

Trixie turned her innocent enthusiasm on him. “Lucifer, would you like to stay? Your face is so cool. Mom bought me a keyboard and you can teach me to play piano.”

“I… I did not buy her a keyboard,” Chloe stated, snapping back to reality. Where had that particular guilt trip come from? She looked at Lucifer in disbelief. “Did _you_ want me to buy her a keyboard?” she asked.

His devil face was expressionless. “Your offspring is out there, Detective,” he said ignoring the question. “Not in here.”

Chloe took another step before halting again, desperately reluctant to abandon any version of Trixie in an empty apartment with the unconscious body of a demon. What if he woke up and hurt her?

She turned to Lucifer in anguish. “I know, okay! I know she’s not real but I can’t leave her alone in here.”

He sighed and stepped back from the door. “You go first, Detective. I’ll stay with the child.”

She nodded, biting her lip. “Goodbye, Monkey,” she whispered. 

Lucifer inserted himself between them, blocking her view of her daughter and allowing her to look back into Hell. It was enough. She could focus on the real Trixie, out there on Earth somewhere and needing her mother. As she walked into the canyon she heard Lucifer say, “So, a keyboard? Dare I hope that you’re more talented than your mother? Your douchey dad never struck me as particularly musical, but I’m living proof that the apple can fall far, _far_ from the tree.”

And then Chloe was outside and everything was silent. The door behind her had swung back until it was almost shut, showing a narrow strip of light that was so bright she could barely look at it, and no hint of what was happening inside. She rubbed her face, exhausted and uncertain. How long was Lucifer going to take? Had he forgotten it was a loop? Was he trapped teaching Trixie to play scales? If she went back for him would she make things better or worse?

Finally, just as she was about to go back in, Lucifer stepped into the canyon and gently closed the door behind him. He walked past her and sank to the floor, leaning his back against the stone wall. Devil face pointing up towards the storm clouds, he sighed and closed his eyes.

“Did you want to teach Trixie to play piano?” Chloe asked in a small voice. 

“No point. She’s one of nature’s drummers,” he said, his voice dull and tired.

Chloe nodded, still trying to come to terms with what had just happened. “Pierce isn’t in there?” 

“No. That was what we in the crime-solving business call a red herring,” he replied.

So, that was that. It was time for the most important question. “Did you know it wasn’t real? When we… when we kissed?”

“I knew it wasn’t real when we first went looking for Cain,” he said. “I imagine I lost track of that about the same time you did. There were a few moments of uneasiness but… no. I forgot. I wasn’t trying to keep you in there.”

He still hadn’t opened his eyes. Chloe considered his devil face. Did he hate himself again? His face had changed when ‘Trixie’ had been in trouble, so presumably he’d felt guilt believing he’d stayed on Earth after the Mayan and endangered her. He would change back, Chloe knew. Here outside the loop he wouldn’t feel bad for staying. He _couldn’t._ In the real world he’d made the right, horribly painful choice. He’d left her, and Trixie—the real Trixie—was safe.

But Lucifer didn’t look guilt-free. If she paid attention to his body language, and not just his red face and clawed hands, he looked wrung out. Ash began to fall from the sky in a snowfall of unmelting flakes, brushing against her cheeks and landing on Lucifer like soil pattering onto a coffin.

Chloe looked from side to side to make sure they were alone and not on Main Street, Hell. The twisting pathways made it hard to tell if anyone was coming, and the thick air muffled sound, but she didn’t have the prickly feeling of being watched. She shrugged, crouched and tugged on Lucifer’s feet until his legs stuck out straight in front of him, and then swung her own leg across and sat on his thighs, facing him. She reached out to brush the ash from his jacket shoulders, fingertips leaving dusty grey smudges on the soft, dark wool.

Lucifer gave the smallest puff of a laugh and murmured, “Detective.” He opened his eyes to watch her fuss, and she discovered that his burning irises didn’t scare her anymore. They were almost as expressive as his brown ones, now that she was becoming used to them. 

Her knees pressed on the hard stone floor as she leant forward to cradle his face in her hands. He jerked his head back against the wall, shocked that she would touch him while he didn’t look human, and she held on, trying to let him know that it was all right now.

“Thank you for getting us out of there,” she said.

Lucifer grimaced. “I think that was a team effort.”

“Then thank you for making sure it didn’t happen in reality,” she said. “Thank you for keeping the demons away from Trixie.”

Chloe used her thumbs to stroke the gnarled, red skin that covered his cheekbones, and gradually it became smooth. His hands, pale and free of claws, came up to rest on her thighs.

“There,” Chloe said quietly. She would have thought that straddling him would have led to any number of suggestive comments, but Lucifer was thinking of other things. His brown eyes were soft and filled with concern as he blinked ridiculously beautiful lashes at her.

“You do _know_ it wasn’t real?” he asked. “Your offspring is safe.”

“I know,” Chloe said, and started crying anyway. Lucifer lifted her without effort and turned her until she sat sideways on his lap.

She was sure there were things they needed to be doing—finding Cain and working out what Harat was up to—but Lucifer’s hand came up to stroke her hair and she decided she was allowed to cry for just a minute.

“They wouldn’t be hell loops if they weren’t designed to torture us,” he said at last.

“Yes,” Chloe said. “I just… I didn’t understand how real they felt until I was in the middle of mine. How much guilt… I should spend more time with Trixie, and I wish… I _wish_ you hadn’t left, even if that was the right thing to do for all of humanity—sometimes I don’t care about that—honestly, mostly I don’t care about that; see how selfish I am—and then Trixie started screaming for me in there and I saw how bad it could be…” Chloe stopped, realising something: Trixie had been screaming for Lucifer as well. _‘Save Trixie,’_ he’d said as he was dying. Was the man whose own parents were a celestial car crash instead of an example coming to care for her daughter? 

“Lucifer,” she asked, “was it torturing me or you? Whose hell loop was that?”

Lucifer sighed, and his arms tightened around her. “Do you know, Detective,” he said, “Hell loops have been my job for the longest time. I’ve been inside an almost infinite number of them. And I’ve only been trapped inside once before, and that was when you were near.”

Chloe frowned, trying to work out when that had been. “That doesn’t happen every time you go in there, then?”

“Of course it bloody doesn’t,” Lucifer snapped, and she laughed and tugged his handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe her face. The ash had stopped falling but she was probably still a smeary mess.

“You know, I was a really tough cop until I met you, and now I cry all the damn time,” Chloe said.

“That’s all right,” he replied. “That makes two of us.”

“Awww, Lucifer,” she said, patting his arm where it circled her waist. “You were never a tough cop.”

“I was a police consultant!” Lucifer objected, and then sighed. “I’m sorry, Detective. I’ve been in that room before—quite regularly, in fact—which was why Harat thought I would believe that it had been left open.”

“Why that room?” Chloe asked.

Lucifer shifted underneath her, but couldn’t escape. “Because a little bit of my old life was preserved in there and I didn’t want to forget it,” he admitted.

“Forget me?”

He scoffed. “Forgetting you isn’t possible. I was sca— I was concerned that I would forget myself. They need me to be a king out here. But in there, just seeing you and Linda, even though I know it’s not real—I knew until today, anyway—I can remember who I was. Who I might still be.”

“I was worried you would forget too,” Chloe said. “I was worried you would forget me. But you don’t need me to be yourself. You don’t even need Linda.” He scoffed again and she pressed her point. “What were you doing when I met you?”

Lucifer smiled. “Playing the piano and wondering when the LAPD had started hiring such attractive detectives.”

Chloe refused to be distracted. “When I met you, you were working to solve the murder of your friend. You worked to make the world a better place in your own screwed up, selfish way. You started going to therapy to make yourself _less_ screwed up and selfish. You didn’t come to LA to find yourself, you came to… to _build_ yourself. That’s who you are. I admire you, Lucifer.”

Curled into his chest, Chloe felt that one hit home. Lucifer tensed for a moment, his eyes darting away to the opposite wall and then back to her. He took a breath deep enough to lift her a couple of inches, and gave a bright and entirely unconvincing smile. 

“Well,” he said. “Thank you, Detective. I appreciate the sentiment, but I would still like something to hold on to. We all need a bloody hideous statue to remind ourselves who we are on occasion, and it’s probably best if Reese’s room is out of bounds to me now. I’ll find something else to occupy me.” His smile faded.

Chloe had a moment of dread wondering how he might spend his time. And then a mass of half-remembered clues came rising out of her subconscious where she must have been putting them together. Guilt burned through her, heating her cheeks until she thought she might grow a Devil face of her own. He had _told_ her, and she’d been so thrown by being nearly dead, and so worried about her body being blown up, that she hadn’t listened. She swallowed, her mouth dry and her throat tight. “Lucifer,” she asked, “how long have you been down here? For you? How long has it been for you?”

“Long enough to be very glad of your visit, even under such circumstances.” Lucifer shrugged, as if the actual length of time didn’t matter, and refused to meet her horrified gaze. “I’m not sure how long we were in that room for. We should get moving.”

Chloe hesitated, brushing her hands across Lucifer’s chest and returning his somewhat disheveled handkerchief to his pocket, giving him time to say anything else he might need to. At last, realising that she’d already drawn him as much as he was willing to be drawn, she clambered off his legs, and leant down to give him a hand up.

“Back in Reese’s room,” she said, “do you think we shared the loop? Is that possible?”

“I’ve never known it to happen before,” Lucifer said, “but it would be consistent with what we experienced. Especially since the ersatz urchin didn’t disappear when you stepped out. _That_ was unexpected. You do keep surprising me, Detective.”

“Me?” Chloe objected. “You think sharing a hell loop is down to _me?_ Other couples share weekends away in Hawaii!”

Lucifer’s face lit up with evil delight. “ _‘Couple’,_ Detective?”

Chloe almost regretted saying it. It wasn’t as if they had much of a future. “Long distance,” she hedged. “Veeeery long distance.”

“Ah-ah-ah! You can’t take it back. _We’re a couple.”_ Lucifer’s pleasure was puppylike. And evil. But mainly puppylike.

“OK, fine. We’re a couple,” Chloe said. “Now can we please deal with Cain? Did he try to lock us in there? Just to get us out of the way? Harat had to have been helping him, right?”

Lucifer sobered. “Yes, I think so. I imagine Harat let Cain know that you had arrived in Hell and it was his chance for… whatever backstabbing he’s planning. Harat lets Cain out, sends us on a wild goose chase to Reese’s room, and once we were inside one of them shuts us in there.”

“To trap us for good or just to buy time for something?” Chloe asked. “Are they trying to escape Hell altogether?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Lucifer mused. “Say what you like about Cain though—and I have, at great length—he doesn’t lack ambition. I rather think he’s trying to depose me and is hoping for a fait accompli.”

“Depose you?” Chloe frowned. It didn’t make sense. “But he wasn’t an angel. He can’t be king.”

“Well, there is that,” Lucifer said. “And some of my subjects might show a touch more loyalty than he expects.” 

“We don’t have enough to go on,” Chloe said. “We still need to find him.”

“You’re right, Detective,” he said. “But if Hell’s rebelling there’s something we should do first. Come along!”

“Lucifer!” Chloe was getting tired of tagging along. “Where are we going?”

He smiled invitingly. “Would you like to see my throne, Detective?”

A hurried trek through the canyons of Hell, and Chloe was staring up at the throne. And up. “Did you build that?” she asked, trying not to giggle. It might have been Lucifer’s bad influence, but there was something suggestive about it. “Did it need to be so…” she gestured. “Big?” 

Lucifer shot her a look that read her mind, and Chloe hurriedly dropped her gaze to her feet. Unfortunately she couldn’t stop her shoulders shaking.

“Really, Detective,” Lucifer admonished. “I didn’t build it. My father grew it with the rest of Hell.” An evil grin spread across his face. “I suppose he might have been feeling particularly masculine that day. He _was_ still with my mother at the time. Not that gender has anything to do with genitalia—for humans or deities—so that doesn’t really excuse dear old Dad…”

“Argh!” Chloe objected. “I’m sorry I asked. I’ll never set foot in a church again.”

“You don’t go to church anyway," Lucifer pointed out. “It’s one of your better qualities.”

“I go to church weddings!” Chloe said. “Not anymore!” she added, with feeling.

“Some good has come of this situation, then. Now, I think that one of us should be professional, Detective. Let’s stop worrying about whether my throne is a giant dick, and get on with dealing with Cain. Who most definitely _is_ a giant dick. Here.” Lucifer pressed the knuckles of his right hand against the bedrock foundation of the throne. 

Chloe was puzzled, and then she realised the rock was different from a moment ago. Starting at the point of contact with Lucifer’s ring, it was shimmering and changing from a rough matt surface to the sheen of a black opal. Like a bubble of glass, in fact, if Lucifer was blowing it _into_ the rock. It stretched into the throne and then disappeared, leaving a black space behind. And even against the dark rock and grey skies of Hell, it stood out as uniquely black, untouchable by light. Chloe was _almost_ sure that it was her imagination making her feel that the air was a little colder.

“It’s a bit of leftover void,” Lucifer said, as if that was an explanation. “There are pockets of it here and there, because Hell wasn’t formed in a particularly organised fashion. Useful things.”

“Where did it come from?” Chloe asked.

“Oh, it was always there,” Lucifer said. “It’s been here as long as I have. The trick is to unlock it.”

“Oh!” Chloe said. “Your ring is a key.”

“Not originally,” Lucifer corrected her. “But Hell’s mine and I can make Hell’s keys out of whatever I choose. And the ring is always on me.” He reached one long arm into the hole. “Of course,” he added, “you have to get the angle right when you go in, Detective.” Chloe gave that one the eye roll it deserved. “I couldn’t leave this lying around while I was on Earth,” he continued, and drew out a scabbarded sword attached to a complicated arrangement of belt and straps. He fastened it around his waist, adjusted it until the sheath rested against his trouser leg, and tapped his ring on the throne again. The rock obediently reformed over the void.

Lucifer drew the sword and gave it a onceover. He should have looked ridiculous, Chloe thought, in his modern suit and Game of Thrones accessories. He didn’t. He looked professional, purposeful. He turned his wrist a little, rotating the blade to examine it although it was too dark to catch the light. Forged from black metal and slimmer than a broadsword, it was designed to be wielded one-handed but long enough to give him a murderous length of reach. She moved to give her partner some space for his sword arm and caught sight of a familiar style of carving on the guard. “Is that the same as Maze’s blades?” she asked.

“Of course,” Lucifer said. “I couldn’t let the demons have all the fun. This will kill any celestial or demonic being. And it will definitely hurt Cain, our formerly-immortal dead mortal.”

“You don’t have a spare in there?” Chloe asked hopefully.

“I’m afraid not,” Lucifer said. “But this ought to do nicely.” He sheathed the sword and smiled. “I think I know where Cain will be. Shall we go on the offensive?”

Going on the offensive proved to be sneakier than Chloe had expected. Lucifer led her back into the canyons, this time always choosing the upward path. She followed him up rising slopes and uneven stairs until he laid a finger to his lips and beckoned her forward towards the edge of a cliff.

She moved towards him, placing her feet on the rock with care, and discovered that they were on top of a wall. Perhaps five storeys below, Cain was holding court in one of the basalt arenas that she was beginning to recognise as typical Hell architecture. It was a good five times the size of the ‘entrance hall’ she had arrived in, so presumably this was the local version of the town square or sports stadium. Even at a distance, she could see that Cain had dropped the last of the illusion of Marcus Pierce. He was surrounded by demons, yet stood as unafraid and arrogant as a politician on the hustings, and his voice bounced off the stone tiers surrounding him and echoed up to where they were standing.

“Lucifer leaves whenever he pleases!” Cain declared.

Next to her, Lucifer stared down with an expression of intense hatred, and slowly, silently unfurled his angel wings. They were by far the brightest thing in the gloom of Hell; a reminder of Heaven in the dark. If the crowd below hadn’t been so focussed on Cain the white feathers would have been unmissable. But no one looked up.

“When he does return to Hell, he has no care for you!” Cain continued.

_Why not Devil wings?_ Chloe wondered, and then Lucifer turned to face her and enlightenment dawned. He had no guilt. She was looking at an avenging angel, and whatever was about to happen was justice. She approved.

Lucifer drew his sword and reached out to her with his other arm. Chloe frowned. He widened his eyes in emphasis, beckoning at her and nodding down at Cain and his audience.

_Nope. No. Not doing that._

“He would rather visit with the damned in their cells than rule his people,” Cain was raising his voice to a peak of insincere indignation.

Lucifer took a step closer to Chloe, and his feathers brushed her shoulder. “Trust me, Detective,” he mouthed, canting his head pleadingly. 

Chloe wavered. She had questions. _Is this really necessary? Why? What happens to my real body if you drop this one? Couldn’t I just wait for you here?_ She wished there was some way to argue without being heard from below. She swallowed, and ducked under Lucifer’s left wing. His arm clamped around her waist. 

“Wait for it…” he breathed into her ear. She threaded her own arm behind his back and held on tight.

“Even now…” Cain began.

Knees bent, they crouched at the edge of the wall. Chloe had been hang gliding once in her life and the pose was similar. Lucifer’s left wing rested on her back, warm and unexpectedly light for its size. The large outer feathers were stiff, but closer to his shoulders and the back of her head there was a sensation of softness. _The Devil is fluffy,_ she thought hysterically, as she tried to ignore the vertiginous drop in front of her. _Who knew?_

Cain’s speech was growing to a climax. “... Even now,” he repeated, “where is your king?”

Chloe didn’t recognise that for the cue it was, so she was taken by surprise when Lucifer tightened his grip further so she was pinned against his ribcage, lifted her until her feet dangled, and kicked off into space.

Gravity claimed them.

She was too startled to scream, and then too self-conscious, limiting herself to a whine from behind clenched teeth. Her hands closed convulsively on Lucifer’s jacket without any prompting from her brain. They dropped rather than flew, the muscles in his wings moving just enough to angle them towards a spot in front of Cain. Before Chloe could begin to get used to having nothing but air underneath her, before the echo of Cain’s “Where is your king?” could fade, Lucifer landed. “Present!” he said, and grinned into the sudden silence.

He kept his eyes on Cain as he lowered Chloe the last few centimeters so that her feet touched the ground next to his and, without making a show of it, held on to her until she had her balance. She relaxed her death grip, patted his arm to let him know she was good, and took a few steps clear on only slightly unsteady legs. Her heart was racing. Lucifer shrugged his wings away, settling his jacket at the same time. Their entrance had had the desired effect. None of the demons were paying attention to Cain anymore.

Lucifer twirled his sword as if he were a top-hatted dancer with a cane, and stopped it with the point aimed directly at Cain’s broad chest. “Rebelling, are we?” he enquired. “It’s a shame you’re not better at it. I _did_ invent rebellion, so if I _could_ offer a smidge of advice: it’s much more impressive to get all up in the face of the person you’re attempting to depose, and not try to hide them away until you’re done. Simple stuff; you’ll get the hang of it.”

Cain shook off his surprise and laughed, hollow and unconvincing. “Do you really need to be here, Lucifer?” he asked. “You can’t tell me you want to be in charge, because that would be a lie. Don’t you prefer sulking in a hell loop pining for your ex?” He finally looked at Chloe.

And it hurt. She’d almost married him. He’d tried to murder her. She still had nightmares about him standing in front of her and firing the gun. And here he was, a dead man she should never have had to see again, talking about exes… _How dare he?!_

“Technically,” she said slowly, recalling her voice classes in drama school and pitching it to carry, “I’m your ex, not his.”

Their demonic audience, always on the side of the most punishing remark, laughed.

“We’re a couple,” Lucifer added, his voice ringing with delight.

Chloe was feeling devilish herself. “Long distance,” she explained helpfully, and was rewarded by Cain’s look of utter, wooden bafflement.

Lucifer tilted his head towards hers in an _awww aren’t we cute?_ gesture and grinned. “We’re making it work,” he finished.

Cain stood with his mouth open, searching for words. “You two deserve each other,” he finally managed. “Go back to Getty’s loop and keep out of my way. Or go to Earth and let me take charge here. It’s win-win, Lucifer.”

“Let you take charge?” Lucifer was deliberately unconvincing as he pretended to think it over. “Let you be king? Be your subject? The throne would suit you down to a T…” his eyes met Chloe’s for just long enough to convey the words _he IS a giant dick,_ “... but the problem is you’re not the slightest bit angelic.”

Cain held up his hands. “You got me, Lucifer. I’m not angelic. Not like you. You don’t really belong here with those straight-out-of-heaven wings, do you?” He paused. “The First Murderer on the other hand…” 

Chloe changed her mind. He wasn’t a politician, he was a used car salesman.

“You can’t be king,” Lucifer said, becoming angry. “You can’t just substitute a human for a celestial. The sovereignty of Hell’s not a football game.”

“And you’re not getting the big picture,” Cain said. “If you’d been here earlier you would have heard me explaining the _Republic_ of Hell. Wouldn’t it be better _not to have a king at all?”_

Lucifer didn’t quite let his smile drop, but his eyes flickered and changed the expression from something designed to annoy Cain to something he used to protect himself when he was outmanoeuvred. Chloe’s heart sank. _Please don’t take this seriously,_ she willed at him. She didn’t think Lucifer truly believed that it was a good idea to leave Cain in charge, because it was obviously a very bad idea indeed. But it was easy to accept a bad idea as an excuse to get what you wanted. Easy not to turn and look at the devastation you were leaving behind you when you had an opportunity to escape. Easy just to say “Oh, I thought it would be all right.” 

_That would be a lie, Lucifer,_ she thought. _Don’t do that._

“No king?” Lucifer asked. “As easy as that?”

Chloe wished she had something, a statue, _something,_ to press into his hands and remind him of who he was. She opened her mouth and closed it again. Here, in front of his subjects, she couldn’t detract from his authority.

And his subjects were muttering now. Uncertain of which way the wind was blowing, possibly uncertain of which way they wanted it to blow, their hushed growling was a mixture of excitement and fear.

Cain went for the kill. “Leave me in charge, and I give you my word to stay away from Chloe,” he said. “No demons will cross that line.”

“Will they not?” Lucifer asked. “How will you enforce that? Will you keep them away from Trixie too? And Linda? Maze? Dan… no, never mind. You can have him.”

“Lucifer!” Chloe objected automatically, but without much strength. She was too relieved that he wasn’t going to concede.

“Sorry, you can’t have Dan either,” Lucifer said. “It doesn’t matter, _murderer._ You’ll give me your word? Your word is worthless.”

“So you’ll stay in Hell?” Cain demanded. “Do you care so much for the demons and the damned?”

“I care enough not to leave them to your tender mercies,” Lucifer said. “Detective…” it was one word, but she heard the apology. 

“I know,” Chloe said. And she did. They were going to have to say goodbye again. Which would break her heart again, but she knew Cain wasn’t offering a genuine alternative.

“There you have it,” Lucifer said, focussing back on Cain. “The answer’s no. There isn’t much that would make Hell less of a holiday spot, but election season would do it. That’s assuming you _mean_ ‘Republic of Hell’ and not some charming scenario where you’re more equal than others. Either way, I’ve seen what happens when Hell doesn’t have a king. I more-or-less just lived through it in the loop you think I’m so fond of, and I won’t allow it to happen here. Earth’s too good for demons and Hell’s too good for you.” He raised his sword, “Now raise your freakishly large arms and surrender, or I’m going to cut them off.”

“I tried to do this the easy way, but you had to fight for something you don’t even want,” Cain said, his face impassive, but radiating a killing anger. “Harat!”

The flying sword caught Chloe’s eye before she spotted Harat in the crowd and realised that he’d thrown it. Cain caught the sword, drew it, and ostentatiously threw the scabbard away. The blade was black.

Lucifer didn’t seem to be alarmed, not that he would let it show. “Oh, someone’s been a busy blacksmith while I was away,” he scoffed. “Do you know how to use that thing?”

“Don’t you _ever_ shut up?” Cain responded. He was charging before he’d finished the question, hoping to take Lucifer off guard. It didn’t work. Lucifer moved unhurriedly forward, smooth and lethal, and the swords met, parted, and swung through a thunderous exchange of blows.

Chloe tensed each time the blades rang against one another, knowing the best thing she could do in a sword fight was keep clear, and hating that. She forced herself not to go towards him.

“Snack?”

Chloe started. Kade was standing next to her, proffering a cardboard bucket.

“What?! No! Is that popcorn?” she asked.

Kade shrugged. “Nah,” she said. “Not _corn._ What are you so uptight about, Decker?”

Chloe gestured. “Right there! There’s a _sword fight_ right there.” She didn’t dare look away from Lucifer, especially since Kade was talking with her mouth full.

Kade laughed. “Please! Lucifer’s going to win. Watch them.”

Chloe watched. The two men seemed evenly matched to her. It was no delicate fencing match, both of them were using their whole height and weight to strike at one another. And then she realised that Cain was just a little uncertain, a little shy of Lucifer’s blade. ‘Formerly-immortal’, Lucifer had called him. And whatever afterlife Cain had, he was determined to preserve it. He flinched as edged black metal skimmed his ear, and backed up a step. Lucifer pressed his advantage. He wasn’t quite relaxed, but he’d seen Cain’s weakness and his own moves were becoming a touch playful.

“Huhhhh,” Chloe said, relief kick-starting her lungs, and then Kade’s presence reminded her of something. “Weren’t you meant to be tracking Harat?”

“Yeah, and I just found him.” Kade nodded at the opposite side of the arena where Harat was standing. “Weren’t you meant to find Cain?”

As if he’d heard his name, Cain came backing towards them, dodging Lucifer’s attack. Chloe scooted away to give them space, but Kade laughed and threw one of her snacks. A dark lump thumped wetly off Cain’s head and plopped to the ground.

She might have meant to distract him, or she might have just been taunting him for the fun of it. Either way, Kade had misjudged it. Cain slipped sideways to avoid Lucifer’s next thrust, and grabbed hold of her. Her cardboard container went flying.

The crowd of demons roared. 

Lucifer froze. 

“That’s enough,” Cain panted. “You don’t want me in charge here? Then let me go free of Hell and you can have your pet back.”

“Pet?!” Kade objected, and was cut off by the impossibly sharp demon-forged swordpoint piercing her leather jerkin. She lifted her chin to meet Lucifer’s eyes in something as close to apology as her pride would allow.

Lucifer was breathing heavily from the aborted fight, a curl of hair was staging a small rebellion of its own, and his brown eyes were seething with frustration.

“You can’t give him a way out, Lucifer,” Kade managed through clenched teeth.

“Well, I can’t give him you, can I?” he pointed out. “What were you thinking?”

Kade shrugged the shoulder furthest from Cain by a careful hair's breadth, which was still enough to tear her jerkin a little more.

Lucifer’s next comments were in the language Chloe had heard the demons speak, and judging by his gestures he did not think much of Kade’s impulsiveness.

“Hey!” Cain interrupted. “Enough! Her life for the key. Do I have your word, Lucifer?” 

“Since you ask so nicely,” Lucifer ground out, “one key coming up.” It took a deft bit of manipulation, but he managed to slip his ring off without letting go of the sword. He threw the silver band and it clinked to the ground midway between them. “Key’s right there,” he said. And when Cain looked sceptical he added impatiently. “It’s not like I can lie, you great lummox! The ring’s a key.”

“Back up!” Cain demanded. 

Lucifer ignored him. “I don’t know why you want to leave,” he said. “Hell’s quite civilised these days. I first landed here before you were a twinkle in Adam’s eye, and believe me it wasn’t so homey. _‘Without form, and void,’_ as the bible says. You’re too dead for Earth, by the way, but you could try to make a break for the Silver City.”

Cain didn’t bother to reply to Lucifer’s reminiscence. His eyes flickered as he judged the distance to the ring.

Lucifer raised an eyebrow at Chloe, and she shifted one foot behind the other, ready to move.

“You’re going to have to let go of Kade,” Lucifer pointed out to Cain. “But that was the plan, wasn’t it?”

The whole arena was silent as the Devil and the First Murderer stared each other down.

Cain broke first. He shoved Kade away and lunged for the ring. Lucifer was faster, darting forward to catch the ring with the tip of his sword and jerk it skittering across the stone floor towards Chloe, who was already moving to catch it up.

Cain turned his head to follow it, which was a mistake. “Not the only key!” Lucifer said, and lifted his sword again, two-handed now, hilt in front of his face and blade pointing at the ground. He slammed it down.

Chloe saw a familiar iridescence spread from the tip of the sword, and she felt the ground tremble as the void opened. Cain backed away as the floor vanished, which moved him further away from Kade and any chance of recapturing his hostage. Desperately, he turned and ran at Chloe, sword raised.

She drew her gun and pointed it at his chest.

He halted his rush, and she nearly laughed as he tried to change from charging to negotiating.

“Chloe,” he said. “Really? Are you going to shout ‘LAPD’ as well? It won’t work.”

“Are you sure about that, _Marcus?”_ she asked, her breath clouding in the sudden cold. “It won’t work on demons. But I’m not dead yet, and you’re a dead former immortal. What do you think will happen if I pull the trigger?”

His face twisted, and she kept hers calm. Let his cowardice eat at him.

There was a _thoomp_ of giant wings beating the beginning of an ascent.

Cain turned away from Chloe a second too late. He was yanked into the air, and she saw a glimpse of his face, slack with surprise, as he disappeared upwards, the collar of his shirt held in one of Lucifer’s fists.

The joint shadow of the two men passed over Chloe as Lucifer kept gaining height, and then he banked and turned, Cain kicking and choking at arm’s length below him, until they were over the hole into the void. He beat his wings to keep in place, massive strokes that blasted frigid air and grit over the crowd, and shouted to be heard. “If you rebel you don’t get to hold _elections,_ Cain. If you rebel, you fall. Did you think that in Hell there was no further to fall?”

“No!” Cain gave a hoarse scream and tried to slice upwards with his sword.

Lucifer dropped him, and he plummeted down, limbs flailing, blade slashing futilely through the air. He disappeared into the empty darkness, and his scream faded to nothing.

Lucifer landed at the edge of the void and dropped to one knee to strike the ground with the hilt of his sword. Obedient to its key, the hole closed. He rose to his feet, tall and terrible, and all that could be heard in the silence that followed was the soft noise as the King of Hell folded his wings away.

“Harat?” he enquired.

Harat tried to run. Unfortunately for him, the other demons had decided that now was the perfect time to demonstrate their loyalty. A dozen hands and at least one tail caught him by his arms, and legs, and hair, and dragged him in front of Lucifer. Reluctantly, Harat knelt.

“I can’t let you out of my sight for one minute,” Lucifer said. “Even by demons’ standards—and that bar’s subterranean—you’re more trouble than you’re worth. An alliance with Cain? Have you no self respect? What did he offer you?”

“A Hell without your laws!” Harat spat. “To be free to do as I please!”

“Not bloody likely,” Lucifer said.

Kade cleared her throat noisily. “I could cut bits off him,” she offered. “There’s a hole in my side. I’m owed too.”

“It’s only a scratch,” Lucifer said. “Don’t go overboard with the cutting. Nothing’s to come all the way off, Kade, do you hear me? Just slice him a little and have him give a blood oath to obey you, and you can keep him.”

“No!” Harat said, scrambling backwards on his knees. “Not her! She doesn’t care which bits she cuts!”

“You go with her or you follow Cain,” Lucifer said. And put like that, it was an easy choice.

While Kade was drawing out the blood oath for her own amusement—and drawing the crowd’s attention—Chloe took the opportunity to get some answers.

“Is Cain dead?” she asked.

Lucifer had sheathed his sword and was trying to smooth his hair back down. He shrugged. “He was already dead.”

“Lucifer!” Chloe said. “You know what I mean! Where did he go?”

“To tell you the truth, Detective, my omniscient Father is the only one who might know the answer to that. Cain’s gone somewhere cold, and dark, and very lonely.” Lucifer shrugged. “Serves him right.”

Chloe reached for his hand and slipped his ring back into place on his finger. He watched her do it with an enigmatic expression. “Why didn’t you leave me behind before you fought him?” she asked. “Don’t I make you vulnerable here?”

“Leave you behind in Hell?” Lucifer asked. “You were safer with me.”

“But you were more vulnerable,” Chloe insisted.

“Pfft! From Cain?” Lucifer scoffed. “I would have skewered him if he hadn’t taken a hostage. He had no right to threaten one of my people. Nice bluff with the gun, by the way. Very Dirty Harry.”

“I didn’t realise he was such a coward,” Chloe said. “I suppose Hell shows you who you are.”

“I hope not,” Lucifer said. “Ignorance is bliss.”

That reminded Chloe of what she’d been wanting to say since she arrived. She tugged him a little further away from their audience until there was no chance they would be overheard. And then she had to force a deep breath around the anxiety that tightened her chest. “Lucifer…” she began, feeling her way into the conversation she needed to have, “... outside Reese’s room… after Trixie… You were worried you might forget who you were on Earth. I’m worried that you’ve forgotten what you promised. You promised to think about a way back to muh— to LA. And I _know_ that loop made it seem impossible, but you said it was designed to torture us, so you can’t believe it.”

Lucifer frowned. “I didn’t forget,” he said. “I would have said something earlier, only it’s a bit of a long shot and I didn’t want to get your hopes up.” 

“I’d like to get my hopes up,” Chloe said. “Love shouldn’t be so sad.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I don’t have anything to compare it to. But I think it’s—“

He broke off and looked her up and down. “It’s been an unexpected pleasure, Detective. But do try to avoid a return visit.”

“What is it?” Chloe asked. “Lucifer? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re not dead at all,” he said. “You’re coming round on Earth. It’s time for you to go home.”

“Home?” Chloe had thought she had more time. She threw her arms around him in panic. “I don’t want to go without you,” she said. “How long will you be here? What will you hold on to to remember us?” 

She felt his lips brush the crown of her head. “I’ll find something,” he said. “I won’t hold on to you, Chloe.”

She felt a shock of cold from the soles of her feet to her ponytail. The world seemed to invert itself, and she was left flat on her back. Someone was pushing on her rib cage, and then breathing warm air into her mouth. Their lips parted for a moment and she managed to croak, “Lucifer?”

“Are you _kidding_ me right now?” Dan choked out, and then she was pulled up into a hug. She didn’t have the strength to return it. Her limbs felt remote and everything hurt. “What happened?” she whispered into Dan’s shoulder. “Dan? I thought you were dead.”

“Why would I be dead?” he asked. “You’re the one! You! I thought the CPR wasn’t going to work! I thought I’d lost you too!”

“Can you… ow,” she said.

“Chloe?!” Ella called from somewhere beyond Chloe’s limited vision. “Oh my god, Dan! Is she with us? Put her down until the ambulance arrives!”

“Ella? Where? What? Ow?” Chloe asked as Dan lowered her back down. She tried to turn her head and realised that it was resting on soft leather, not concrete. Dan was in his shirtsleeves. 

“Chloe,” Dan said, “don’t try to move. Ella’s right there. She stopped me…” Chloe saw he was blinking back tears. “You ran into the water, but there must have been a live wire… you went down and Ella stopped me. She turned the power off, and I called for backup, and then we both did CPR…”

“Yeah we did!” Ella’s voice interrupted. “Guess who’s going to live and go to jail? This amateur bomb-maker dude!”

“You saved our suspect?” Chloe asked.

“Ella saved everybody,” Dan said. “I was going to run right after you. She saw what happened to the guy you were chasing and worked it out.”

“I’m so glad you’re both alive,” Chloe said, and the weak smile she managed didn’t do justice to her relief. She’d thought that a bomb had gone off and sent them all to various afterlives. She started to close her eyes and then opened them wide as she remembered something. “Can you call Maze?”

It took Chloe a lot longer than she would have liked to get discharged from hospital, and she spent every second of it horribly aware of how much time was passing in Hell. It felt like an eternity before she was allowed back to the precinct and could ask Ella for a favour.

“Wooooah,” Ella said. “When you see them laid out like this, they’re kind of beautiful.” She reached out a gloved finger to nudge one of the feathers back and forth on the lab table. “And kind of sad,” she added. “We never did find out where they came from, but it must have been a crazy big bird. Like, Sesame Street big. Maze needs these for one of her bounties?” Somewhere under her trusting manner, Ella’s inner scientist was deeply suspicious of the supposed facts being offered. And Maze was no help, standing back against the wall with folded arms and a murderous expression.

“Mmm-hmm, yep,” Chloe said. “Maze needs them for a bounty. It was really nice of you to borrow them for her, Ella. Especially since this is _so_ top secret. We just need a minute and then they can go right back into Evidence.”

“Well, sure, Chloe,” Ella said. “I’ll just, you know, give you guys some space. Oh, and hey, I’m really looking forward to our Doctor Who marathon!” She grabbed her coffee cup and ducked out of the lab.

Chloe took a deep breath and pushed the guilt back down. She _hated_ lying to Ella.

“Daaaamn, Chloe,” Maze drawled, pushing herself off the wall and strolling forward to examine the feathers. “He really took a hit for you, didn’t he?”

He really had. The bloodstained, broken feathers spread out in front of her in reproach. There were so many of them. Too large to be bird feathers, indeed. After Marcus had died, she had sometimes woken up on the edge of tears, remembering fragments of a nightmare where Lucifer was crushing her to him under a dome of feathers and blood. She had never heard him scream like that when she was awake. Months later, after he said goodbye on the balcony, angel wings spread against the night sky, she had tried to put an end to the nightmares by finally asking Ella if there had been anything collected from the scene of Marcus’s death. Now her curiosity was paying off.

“This won’t work,” Maze pointed out. “They’re dead feathers. Cain’s goons shot them up pretty good.”

Since she needed Maze’s help, Chloe halted her eye roll at the merest flicker. “Some optimism would be nice right now,” she said. “This was your idea.”

“It wasn’t an idea,” Maze said. “You asked if there was a channel to Hell. A whole feather would be as close as you could get, but it still won’t work because you don’t _belong_ there. You’re not a demon and you’re not dead. Did you _want_ me to kill you?”

“No,” Chloe said. “But I don’t have to go back myself, I just need to send something.”

“You’re as bad as him,” Maze said in disgust. “No one ever asks if I’d like to go.” 

“You told me you didn’t want to!” Chloe objected. “What happened to Auntie Maze?”

“Auntie Maze should still have been asked,” Mazikeen said bitterly, drawing the tip of one of her blades through the feathers. “And not left to one side like an empty glass waiting for the bar staff. Not replaced with Kade because _of course_ we’re all the same!”

Chloe bit her lip, taking a second to find the right words to stand against Maze’s anger. “Lucifer wasn’t trying to replace you,” she said. “He was trying to remember you. He was trying to hold on to familiar things from this life, because he left everyone who might understand him behind for their own good. And I need him not to give up, Maze. I need him to remember us so that he can remember himself.”

Maze stared at Chloe, her face tight as she struggled with her need to believe it. “Whatever. You can stop looking so pathetic,” she said. “Here!” She twisted her wrist and used the blade to flip a feather up and free, letting it float down into her outstretched hand. “This one’s whole.”

It was. There were no spots of dried blood on it, and it was so bright against Maze’s palm that Chloe thought it might be glowing.

“Thank you,” Chloe said, voice cracking slightly with relief. And held out her hand.

Maze’s fingers closed over the feather. Chloe froze, scared to reach further and cause offence, scared to retreat and lose her only chance. She didn’t know what Maze was thinking.

Maze let out a sharp breath, as if she’d taken a blow. “It’s all yours, Chloe,” she said at last, handing the feather over. “Do what you want with it.” And she stalked out of the lab.

“Thank you!” Chloe called after her, hoping they could talk when Maze was in a better mood. She slipped the feather into a small evidence bag, and the bag into her jacket pocket. There was one more thing to do.

Chloe took Trixie with her to the penthouse, even though it was almost her bedtime. Going to Hell and seeing your illusory daughter made you cling to the real one when you had the chance.

“Why are we here, Mom?” Trixie asked.

“I don’t know, Monkey,” Chloe said. “It just seemed like the right place to do something a bit magic.” She tugged open the glass doors and stepped onto the dark balcony. A cold wind whipped her hair and made her shiver.

“You’re going to send Lucifer the note?” Trixie asked, and Chloe smiled down at her. At least one of them had faith that it was possible.

They’d done it together as a craft project. The feather had been tied to her bullet necklace, and a large cardboard gift tag had been tied to them both. There was just room for a couple of lines in her most minuscule, cramped handwriting.

_Hold on to this + come home soon. Santa bringing T keyboard + drums. She needs lessons. All I know is Heart + Soul. Yr Detective x_

Trixie had added glitter to the back of the tag and hadn’t even asked what Chloe was going to write on it. The solemnity of the occasion had trumped her curiosity.

Now Chloe held the necklace by the feather so that the bullet and tag hung below it like a pendulum. She straightened her arm out over the edge of the balcony. This was crazy, and if she lost the most precious thing she owned for no good reason she was never going to forgive herself. She’d thought about asking Linda to stand down below on the sidewalk, just in case, but that would have felt like cheating.

“Have faith, Chloe,” she whispered, and slowly, reluctantly, uncurled her fingers to let go of the feather and its homemade little payload.

The night wind whisked it from her half-open hand, spinning the feather like a single-bladed helicopter seed, and Chloe was hit by panicked remorse. “No!” she cried, and Trixie grabbed her other arm to anchor her when she would have tried to snatch it back. She could still see it, the glowing feather tracing a spiral path of light as it drifted down and away from her. 

“Watch where it lands, Trixie!” she said, as if it was possible to see from that height, as if someone wouldn’t steal it before the elevator reached the street. 

And then the light winked out.

“It’s gone, Mommie,” Trixie whispered. “Your necklace is gone.”

Chloe hugged her, and they stared at the blank spot in the night sky where the feather had been. _It’s really gone,_ Chloe thought. And then she deliberately thought it a few more times to make herself believe it. She was shaking from relief and leftover adrenaline. 

“Did it go to Lucifer?” Trixie asked. 

“I think it did, baby,” she said. “I think we did a miracle.”

Far, far below, Lucifer looked up, puzzled. There was a pinprick of light in the dark clouds; a falling star getting closer. 

He held out his hand to catch it.


End file.
